Lord's Breakfast
I saw the black Doms bickering
in the gully
They sat on the last ladder
(of caste)
and lived in thatched
of plastic canopy
“how do they live there ?”
“doesn't snake bite happen to them?”
They fought in the open sun
And drank elixir in the earthen mug
Oneday my eyes got black
When Dom touched my father.
The poison of centuries was drilling
deep in my soul
Though they made the platter
For God ---
(Ancient basket makers for sacred religious rituals.
Isn't it ludicrous ?)
Waist dipped in water
My mother's offering
Fruits, cucumber, thekuas,
to the lord sun
In the first ray of sundowning.
Sitting on the bank
I used to see with my sleepy eyes--
Red lord showering
the pale basket
For breakfast--
Footnote : Domar ( Dom ) is an untouchable caste of Hinduism. They are forbidden from the mainstream. Poisonous caste system of Hinduism has shattered their souls for centuries.
They are basket weavers for religious rituals and the irony is that their baskets are allowed in worship rooms and temples but they are not welcomed.
High Talks
The high talks of hindu codes
Got slanted
as they started to sank
Downwards--
Skin stuck around them
Alike-- wool on
needle of my mother
I mimicked and also weaved one
The red sweater. They call it
scribbles of fate, not me
They are banished--
by my religion
And gods--also
Alien to me. I don’t worship them as
One wrinkle takes hundred of years--
Footnote: there is a long history of caste system in Hinduism. Despite so many glorious achievements in the social and metaphysical aerena, it has conveyed one of the heinous things, to disown the lowest caste which are called untouchables.
They have been deprived of basic rights by upper castes.
I have written this poem upon the untouchables.
Untouchable
One day as a little wee
in white clouds
I demanded a tumbler of water
to Champa
my hell bursted in
broken pieces littered
slapped--spicules upon the sand
Grandmother
Harriden reminded me
Forgotten lesson of the motherland
“don’t touch Bhangi the toilet cleaner"
(That was the first lesson of untouchability.)
After several years moving
Around the sun
I dusted off the Manu Sanhita
In sepulchred sodden library
My eerie eyes caught
Steps of Gandhi slithering--
Through the mud of lowest ladder
Solid steps broke the
Segmented squelch
Gandhi baptized them
Harijan ( Son of God)--
The great movement vibrated
India not to shake off
But
Baked the hierarchy in somersault
Rotten rugs now
Began to breed in
God’s sperm.
A big bug bursted out
of my skull
Liquid soul was in
Viscus brook of clarified butter
Champa’s son sipped-sipped-sipped
To salvate my forefathers
I see Gandhi picking up
Mudbugs
Dropping in
divine seminal fluid
Dipping drowning awaiting
The funeral of God!
Footnote :
Bhangi- lowest caste of Hinduism they are tagged as untouchable
Manu Sanhita- The book of code of conduct of Hinduism
Harijan - Son of God
They Touched My Father ( Prose Poem )
The day I saw the touch I was a tiny one living in the apricity of parents ; you know the most clumsy touch was that. They were standing in a curl of crowd and trail of dark talks tearing away everything around; abuse and fighting at the roadside was Domar’s regular routine.
A sparrow lived in me, suddenly tweeted to crescendo as Domars had touched my father.
My forefathers fed that sparrow and those days it was nestling in me !
Father ! you know , you are disrupted now and the wholeness has lost in tentacles, grown at the site of touch.
A cold curse is going to denounce you for millions of years !
And perhaps I will endure or…?